Wick Allison posted an item over on FrontBurner purporting to explain how Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson was only telling a wily lie yesterday when she explained to a KERA-FM (90.1) reporter that money for the overall Trinity River project is not linked to a controversial toll road planned along the river.

I can’t even begin to unravel the very, very Wickian logic here. He thinks she said the opposite of what she meant in order to throw those dumb congresspeople up in D.C. off our clever scent down here in Dallas. Wick, Wick, Wick. It’s time to accept the outcome of the Civil War, throw off the gray and join the Union.

Please allow me to share the heart of the lie with you.

The city says it hopes to get $461 million in state and federal funds for the transportation part of the Trinity project. Allison is telling you what both mayoral candidates are now saying: that somehow that money is also going to pay for all of the non-transportation stuff in the project, like lakes and parks.

They do have to spend transportation money on transportation. Otherwise Washington sends the Reconstruction police down here and somebody goes to the blue-belly pokey.

Perhaps more to the point: Because the toll road is such a honking terrible idea and design -- bad for flood control, bad for traffic relief and so on -- the cost of building it has now escalated to three times original estimates, upwards of a billion dollars.

So, you see, the federal and state transportation money they hope to get is barely a third to half of what the road itself will cost. And the North Texas Tollway Authority has been saying for years that it cannot come close to bridging that gap with toll revenues.

Far from providing extra money to the rest of the Trinity River project, the toll road is a hungry python gobbling up land and money enough to wreck the rest of the project.

Notice how Wick Allison, The Dallas Morning News' editorial page, Tom Leppert and Ed Oakley talk only in broad scare-tactic generalities? Wouldn’t it be nice if one of them just once sat down and wrote out an argument with facts and specific points to offer? Ever wonder why that never happens?

Did Wick Allison really just call Eddie Bernice a liar? And so casually!

The other thing I can’t help thinking about when Wick comes to mind: Why do we have to take all this advice on a Dallas issue from a guy who doesn’t live in Dallas? Why are all these Park Cities people telling us Dallas people we can’t vote on a Dallas issue? Hey, Wick: Which candidate for mayor of Dallas did you vote for? --Jim Schutze